MONDAY. July something or other. Written en route.

Their apartment is a 4 room, 3 floor walk up in Williamsburg. She flits about the kitchen and TV area showing me how "this is the first place I've lived where I had a perfect place to put that hutch. That space was empty when we moved in"
"Like it was waiting for you," I say. "Yea," she smiles and lights another cigarette. I follow her out on to the fire escape to see the view and think how nice it would be to sleep there, but she is already telling me how once she took a nap out there on couch pillows.

Their bedroom is big. "We never put our clothes away." She sighs, but it's a Happy/Content/Loving accceptance Sigh. It's okay that they're messy. It's a cute quirk that his clothes are thrown in with hers - as entangled as their sheets and arms when they lay together at night.

The smiles I'm givin her are genuine. I'm happy for her. So, there's that physical/knee jerk reaction -- I smile.

*
One time he came home from work and gave her a call so she could drop down the keyes as usual. Neighborhood kids jumping on an abandoned sofa laughed as the keys fell right on his head.
"How was work?" she asked as he walked through the door - ignoring her impulse to hold and pet him; kiss his head.. because it is funny.
"Ok" he must have said - scratching his head and smiling back

*

Over dinner we talked about our mothers. Hers always had someone and felt lonely when she didn't. Mine never had anyone and exists most noticeably in solitude; going three days at a time without having a conversation with anyone else. Most of the time, we don't want to be our parents. We see in them things we don't like about ourselves; things we might become. So we manifest into the opposite.
*

So here I am and there she is getting ready to go to his show. We leave their apartment dark and stifled in late July heat. I'm sure they'll climb the steps later talking and laughing and falling asleep after making love. "Heh," I grunt to myself, "yea probably just like that." And it will probably be just like that because wasn't it always?
*

On the PATH ride home I imagine myself without sexual organs. Without desires. Without love that pulsates ferociously through me. I try and feel ambivalence where my fire is. But I only experience waves of fatigue washing over me and an inward groan at the thought of the bike ride ahead. I distract myself about reading up on an amazing woman activist in Afghanistan and twisting my hair.

I want to go somewhere no one I know has ever been before. To have that and submerge in it, own it, disappear? Where there used to be a "Couldn't/Wouldn't" there is a "And then?" A question implying I did and there is an outcome is the ripples I would make. Yes, "And then?" How far would these ripples reach and how hard would the rock - symbolizing the act of disappearing - break the surface of the pond? What sound would it make and how high up would the water fly after it hits?

__

I almost cried when I was at the gaycenter on West 13th, so happy was I to not be here.
I was most content eating my lunch in Tompkins Sq. Park alone, but not alone. Watching and probably being watched.